Aug 14 (TheWrap.com) - Lions Gate has been granted expedited discovery in their ongoing case against a variety of websites that began offering pirated torrents of “The Expendables 3” weeks before its upcoming theatrical release.

In a document filed on Wednesday, the U.S. District Court authorized expedited third party discovery to discern the identities and locations of the defendants. These are the owners and operators of several websites including limetorrents.com, billionuploads.com, hulkfile.eu, swankshare.com and dotsemper.com.

Lions Gate Films Inc. filed an ex parte application for authorization to serve subpoenas on third parties who provide services to the defendants, seeking information that could reasonably be expected to lead to the discovery of the defendants’ true identities and locations.

As most torrent sites are hosted outside of the United States, it can be very difficult to discern the identities of the owners of each site. Lionsgate has reached out to the various sites included in their original lawsuit, but have indicated they'd received no responses.

“The Expendables 3” is due in theaters on August 15, with some industry experts certain it will lose millions of dollars in potential box office revenue due to the pirated copies, which have been downloaded more than 2 million times.